Travel back in American history to the era of slavery and abolition. After reading about the Underground Railroad, young historians examine a painting depicting the event, and write a narrative from the point of view of a person in the...

Being expressive in a creative, empathetic, or imaginative way is not only fun, it builds good pre-writing and communication skills. Learners with visual impairments have a roundtable discussion session where several sentence frames...

Curator, artist, art handler, archivist, conservator-restorer, guide. Who would have thought there were so many different kinds of museum professionals? After a visit to an art museum, class members reflect on the role of the museum in...

Write with the senses! Try using art to inspire writers to consider all of the senses. Here, the class is divided in half. Each group looks at one of two images, imagines the senses that would be engaged, and records answers to five...

Sixth graders research Haititian art and the art of Henri Rousseau on the Internet and view videos. Then they created their own drawings of animals, plants, and biomes using markers. Finally, they complete a writing assignment about...

Sixth graders explore various waterfowl species and discover how duck stamps are used. After researching specific types of birds for a stamp competition, they draw the birds in various natural settings. Before sending the submissions,...

Students practice the techniques of weaving and braiding in this introductory lesson on family traditions and visual art. The lesson includes a video and other resource links.

Students demonstrate visual literacy skills by analyzing the images from the mural in the Library of Congress. In this visual art analysis instructional activity, students examine the mural and further their knowledge by using tools of...

In this engaging activity involving close analysis of abstract expressionist art, your class members will not only discover more about artist Friz Scholder's Native American art, but they will also have the opportunity to consider...

To the Native American people living on the plains, the buffalo represented culture, art, sustenance, and survival. Explore the history of the buffalo with a social studies lesson, in which learners create a buffalo hide painting in the...

Save trees! Save graphite! Save ink! Go paperless! Make a list, mindmap, sketch an idea. Import, scale, rotate, and add text to images. Save content into books and share your creations. All this and more is yours with a free visual...

Only one thing can compare to the whimsy of Dr. Seuss: a child's imagination. Pair the bouncing narrative of a Dr. Seuss book with your learner's illustrations in a fun reading activity. As you read a selected passage, your class draws...

Pointillism is the focus of a instructional activity that asks young artists to compare Vance Kirkland's painting style with aboriginal dot art, and then to produce their own piece of dot art.

Explore the world of textured landscapes through the eyes of the famous artist, Grant Wood. Here is an elementary art activity in which scholars learn about Grant Wood's life, view his work, draw their own textured landscape, and then...

Jazz and the City, Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement, Jazz and Gender, Jazz and Literature, Jazz and the Arts, Jazz and Film. Here's a packet of unit plans organized around themes that reflect American culture. Each unit examines how...

Advertisers know how to use persuasive techniques to create powerful visuals that inform and influence others. Class members examine these techniques and then demonstrate their knowledge as they craft posters, flyers, collages, etc. for...

Young artists create 2-D art using air-dry clay and acrylic paint in this mosaic-making activity. Kids trace their design sketch on a clay slab, cut out the pieces, and after drying, paint and mount their tile design.

The works of Spanish painter Joan Miro are used to inspire young artists to create their own colorful works of art using stitchery canvas and yarn. Kids draw their design on plastic canvas using erasable crayons and then stitch the...

Combine art and science with an activity that has kids gathering items from their environment to include in the decorative paper they create.

Young learners discover kamishibai, a popular Japanese storytelling art, and explore how these Japanese folktales illustrate the country's cultural themes and values through discussion and storyboarding. 

Learners work in small groups to investigate a variety of art and architecture forms common during the Old Kingdom epoch in Ancient Egypt. Learners then evaluate how these art forms reflect a culture's beliefs and values. And, finally,...

Students examine how a piece of art tells a story. In this visual art instructional activity, students interpret a piece of art work by writing a newspaper article that tells the story of the moment in time that is depicted in a picture....

In this visual arts worksheet, students view two examples of Christian Art and complete the five short answer questions by comparing the two art pieces.

Students study about theatrical design by developing environments for improvised and scripted scenes. They develop focused ideas for an environment using visual elements.